Is It Wrong to Lie? samharris.org
I do not remember what I thought about lying before I took “The Ethical Analyst,” but the course accomplished as close to a firmware upgrade of my brain as I have ever experienced. I came away convinced that lying, even about the smallest matters, needlessly damages personal relationships and public trust.
It would be hard to exaggerate what a relief it was to realize this. It’s not that I had been in the habit of lying before taking Howard’s course—but I now knew that endless forms of suffering and embarrassment could be easily avoided by simply telling the truth. And, as though for the first time, I saw the consequences of others’ failure to live by this principle all around me.
This experience remains one of the clearest examples in my own life of the power of philosophical reflection. “The Ethical Analyst” affected me in ways that college courses seldom do: It made me a better person.
I hope to produce a similar effect in readers of LYING, my first ebook.
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LYING has been published exclusively as a Kindle Single edition. Like other ebooks in this format, it is short enough to be read in one sitting. If you don’t have a Kindle, you can read LYING using the Kindle Reader App on your iPad, iPhone, Blackberry, PC, or other device.